


Rotational Invariance

by idyll



Category: Angel: the Series, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, Ficlet, Gen, Mathematics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-29
Updated: 2008-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John introduces his team to his cousin, Fred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rotational Invariance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/gifts), [lillian13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillian13/gifts).



> Set post-NFA. Somehow Fred came out of the alley instead of Illyria. Written in the middle of the night, with a strategy of "follow one word to the next and don't look back." CHOCKFUL of fanon as it pertains to John. Huzzah!

When John was sixteen he and his dad were at each others' throats constantly and his mother, to avoid a whole summer of John being stuck on a military base with nothing better to do than get in trouble and piss his father off, sent him to her sister's in Texas.

John's father made him bring all his books, and a dozen assignments his teachers insisted would help him, perpetually behind on account of moving from base to base, catch up to his grade level. He finished them all the first week and stacked the books in a corner of his room at the Burkles'.

Aunt Trish and Uncle Roger only had one kid and she was ten years younger than John, so he didn't really have high hopes for the summer. But Uncle Roger had a handful of brothers, who in turn had a handful of kids each, and as luck would have it he had about four "cousins" his age who were just up the road.

They raised their fair share of hell during those months, including chipping in fifty bucks each to buy a junker of a car that Bobby and Lucky got running again, and which they then drove around Lucky's family's ranch with the reckless abandon of teenage boys who didn't need to worry about things like licenses and traffic laws.

It was a great summer, really. John got drunk for the first time ever on cheap beer, got high on the weed that Wayne's friend's brother grew in an old barn on the abandoned Sloop property, and lost his virginity to his cousin Sarah, who wasn't actually a blood cousin but who was, in fact, John would realize later, a total slut.

But for all of that, the thing that marveled John the most had to do with his little cousin Winnie, who spent most of the time he was there following him around and begging him to put her on his shoulders. He found her in his room one day, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his math textbook on her lap, her face slack and her gaze skittering carelessly across the pages.

He had an old test tucked in the back and when she found it she frowned at the proof that took up the back page for a second before looking up at him and telling him what he'd done wrong, which John already knew because he'd gotten it wrong on purpose to pull his overall grade down as part of his "piss off the colonel" campaign.

They sat together, going through the book, and John saw himself in the way Winnie could take one look at a page of problems and then rattle off the right answers to every single one of them, even though she had only just finished kindergarten. When Aunt Trish came in a few hours later she blinked tears away and told them about her mother and her own Uncle Stephen, and it was the first time John heard about the peculiar affinity his mother's family had for numbers and math.

*

There was a falling out between their families later that year, though what caused it John never found out, and he didn't see the Burkles again until his mother's funeral ten years later. Aunt Trish and Uncle Roger were the same steady folks he fondly remembered, but little Winnie was a whole different story.

She went by Fred, now, and her childish sweetness had given way to antiestablishment paranoia and a pot habit that was blatantly apparent to everyone but her parents, who were tolerant and supportive of her Damn the Man rhetoric (which was probably the opposite reaction she wanted, John figured, and he kind of felt bad that her teenage rebellion was falling on deaf ears).

He saw his mother's family, and himself, in Fred's height and lanky frame, but nothing more of numbers or math until the night after the funeral, when she ditched her parents at their hotel and found him sitting in his backyard at three in the morning.

They played the convoluted number game they'd created that long ago summer, when she'd come down with the chicken pox and had needed a distraction from the itching. John's defeat in his yard that night was crushing and somewhat embarrassing considering that she was stoned when she arrived and worked her way through two additional joints during the game.

But it made the night a little easier to bear, which John would always be grateful to her for.

They kept in touch after that, mostly via letters. It was hard, what with him being on active duty and, if not always moving around then at the mercy of an APO address in a different country. Fred herself got pretty busy after she put down the bong and went off to college, which made their corresondence even more sporadic.

At least until Fred vanished into thin air for five years.

*

Fred's different again the next time John sees her, which is several years after her sudden and inexplicable return. He has no idea what the hell happened to her, because neither she nor her parents will talk about it. Just like he has no idea why she left physics behind and started working at detective agencies and law firms, of all things.

John would make an issue of that now that he's face-to-face with her again and she can't hang up on him and claim the call was dropped, but he figures he doesn't have a right to call anyone on their secrets. Not when he shows up at her house with two aliens, who live with him in the lost city of Atlantis, where they all fight evil life-sucking aliens, complex humanoid robots, and militant Amish folk.

"It's so good to see you!" Fred says as she hugs him hello. When she steps back John is surprised to find himself in her again, this time in the shadowed loss in her eyes and the weight of secrets on her shoulders. He thinks she's just as surprised to see it in him, and they blink at each other for a moment before shaking it off.

John makes the introductions, and it's kind of funny how Rodney and Fred both startle at the sound of each others' names. John should have expected it, really, because Fred started publishing again a couple of years back and he knows that Rodney reads every journal in his field.

Rodney snaps his fingers then points at Fred. "Supersymmetry &amp; P-Dimensional Subspace," he states triumphantly when he places the name.

"Wow, yeah," Fred says, eyes wide, seemingly pleased. "I can't believe you know it. I mean, I've heard of you--of course I have--and--"

"It was completely and totally wrong, of course," Rodney continues, "but not nearly as idiotic as about ninety percent of what's being published lately."

It's a compliment in Rodney-speak, but Fred looks like she wants to punch him out, and considering that she grew up with a baseball team's worth of male cousins who taught her all sorts of dirty Texan tricks, John knows she probably _could_, too, even though she's still stick-thin.

And that sets the tone between the two of them, at least until Fred finally leaves her Southern manners by the wayside in the face of Rodney's sharp tongue and tears into him in a spectacular fashion. That's about when a seriously disturbing glint comes into Rodney's eyes that John's only ever seen when Samantha Carter was in the vicinity.

*

Four nights into their weeklong visit he's on the back porch with a beer, staring up at a sky that's filled with unfamiliar stars, when he hears a crash from inside, which is followed by Rodney screaming loudly about shoulders, dislocation, and pain. When he gets into the kitchen, Fred has Rodney bent over the table, one of his arms twisted up behind his back.

"--sorry, okay?" Rodney yells. "My god, this bloodthirsty need for violence must be hereditary because--Ow, ow, ow!"

"Keep the commentary to yourself, buddy," Fred says pleasantly.

"What happened?" John asks Teyla, who's watching the scene with the air of someone who thinks Rodney deserves what Fred's dishing out.

"Rodney...I believe the term is...'goosed'...Fred," Teyla tells him.

John smacks the back of Rodney's head. Hard. "Jesus! She's my _cousin_ and, like, ten years younger than you."

"Yes, yes, I know and I'm sorry, and would you please convince her to let me go before she snaps my arm off at the joint, for god's sake?"

"Are you going to keep your hands to yourself?" Fred demands.

"Yes, you crazy little--_ow_! Stop twisting, damn it!"

Fred smiles a little too brightly and twists Rodney's arm once more before letting him go. On the other side of the room Ronon is grinning around a mouthful of the apple he's eating.

*

John and Fred go out back while Teyla helps Rodney ice his shoulder. They talk about the years since they've seen each other, which are carefully edited on both sides, if John's reading Fred right, which he knows he is. They split a six-pack of beer and a bag of chips and argue about the rules of their number game, which neither of them remembers well enough to play in its original incarnation.

"Ever wonder how you got to where you are?" Fred asks after it's gone midnight and then some.

It's a meaningless question, an idle conversation filler, really, but there's a weight to the words that reminds John of the last time they sat outside together in the middle of the night, and of how little they really know about each other.

"All the time," he answers, seriously and honestly.

"It's good to know it's not just me," she replies in kind, and John wraps an arm around her shoulders because, yeah, it's good to know that.

*

The rest of the visit goes better than John expected after how it started. Rodney makes a show of Not Touching Fred to the point that John has to grab her around the waist haul her out of the room to keep her from having another go at dislocating his shoulder.

But Ronon takes her out back to calm her down and that turns out to be the start of a beautiful friendship in which they both eat disgustingly large amounts of tacos, Fred teaches Ronon all the dirty Texan tricks she knows, and Ronon teaches Fred how to adjust them for use on an opponent his size.

There's also a lesson in high-end Mexican tequila, but considering that Fred ends up puking in the shower while Ronon hangs over the toilet, John thinks that one was a failure.

Fred never comments on the fact that Ronon and Teyla ask about things that are common knowledge to anyone who's been on this planet for, oh, longer than a week. In turn, none of them comment on the odd books they find on her shelves, or the truly bizarre phone calls she gets from some guy named Spike about angels and guns, or the lines of what seem like sand that are on all of the window sills.

*

Fred walks them out to their rental car the evening they leave, and she and John promise to keep in touch, no matter what, and make vague excuses for why they might not get back to each other immediately.

Before John pulls away another car pulls up in front of the house. Three guys climb out, bickering with the ease and familiarity of people who've known each other for years, through many things large and small, and John watches Fred slide seamlessly into their midst as they walk--four abreast--up the walkway to her house.

.End


	2. Isotropy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set a year after Rotational Invariance, when John and Rodney are stuck on Earth after the events in _The Return_.

Fred shows up unexpectedly on John's third Saturday back on Earth. She brings a heat-insulated bag filled with what she swears are the best tacos in Los Angeles, a cooler bag stuffed with turkey sandwiches that are almost orgasm inducing, and a stack of graph paper.

They eat the tacos and sandwiches on the living room floor while drawing up intricate games of thirty-two digit Sudoku for one another.

When Fred calls foul at John's use of imaginary numbers, they break for a movie. Fred has a cache of DVDs with her, some of which John can't imagine her owning.

"I borrowed them," she admits as John loads an action movie into his brand new DVD player. "You and Charles have similar movie tastes."

Halfway through the second movie, he and Fred are situated on opposite ends of John's sofa, socked feet tangling together and heads turned to the side to see the television.

"It sort of never occurred to me that you'd come here."

Fred looks away from the movie and gives John a small smile. "Yeah, that's really not how we operate, is it?"

Her Texas accent is slightly more pronounced than it was when she arrived. John knows that his own neutral drawl is slipping into rhythm with hers; he's always had a tendency to pick up other people's accents when he's comfortable and relaxed.

John lifts a brow. "So, why the change?"

"I'm not sure." Fred shrugs and wrinkles her nose. "You just seemed a little...well, a little like I've been a time or two. Lost, maybe. Or adrift."

John's been both lost and adrift in the literal sense more times than he can count, but he's never felt it more than he does now that he's found and anchored. Fred does him the courtesy of looking away as he fights to breathe against the tide of _loss_ that's trying to crush his chest in.

*

When John wakes up the next morning it's to the sound of raised voices in his living room. He stumbles out, not fully coherent, and finds Fred and Rodney facing off over the torn pages of a journal, whisper-screaming at one another. Or, well, Fred is trying to control her volume. Rodney's being a lot louder.

John hasn't seen nor spoken to Rodney since three days after they got back to Earth and John was given a team assignment while Rodney was whisked off to Area 51.

"Now look what you did!" Rodney snaps. He points at John and glares at Fred. "You woke him up."

Fred's lips curl into an impressive snarl and her right hand clenches into a fist. John thinks about it for a second and decides it's way too early to deal with this. He turns around and goes back to bed.

*

Two hours later John gets up again, showers, and finds Rodney and Fred in the kitchen. Fred's standing at the stove, poking at chicken she's frying in a cast-iron skillet that John knows wasn't in his kitchen yesterday. Rodney is sitting at the small bistro table in the corner of the room, bent over a cutting board and cutting honeydew and cantaloupe into neat squares.

John closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and takes in the scent of fried chicken, melon, and biscuits. He's flung back in time to the summer he was sixteen, which was probably the only more-than-tolerable summer of his life. "Oh."

"Come over here," Fred says. John can hear the grin in her voice and, sure enough, when he opens his eyes it's splitting her face in two. "Biscuits are done."

*

"What are you doing here?" John asks Rodney later, after they've eaten authentic southern food and played a marathon game of scrabble that almost resulted in Rodney and Fred coming to blows.

Rodney clears his throat. "Your cousin invited me."

John looks at Fred, who shrugs and rolls her eyes. "He's your _friend_." Her face darkens somewhat and tugs at her hair, down at the root, seemingly without realizing it. "Friends help. Trust me."

They go to a drive-in movie that night and park John's SUV ass-first in a spot, then open the back hatch and perch there. Rodney is at the concession stand, probably demanding more butter on his popcorn.

Fred's feet dangle above the ground, and her knee is pressed against John's.

"What is it you do out there in L.A.?" John asks.

Fred does him the courtesy of not responding with whatever job title she's hiding behind this month. She turns too-knowing and overtired eyes on John. "What is it you do for the government?"

They stare each other down for long moments with matching narrow-eyed gazes before both of their expressions slip into arched-brow deflection. They say, simultaneously, "You'd never believe me."

*

Rodney leaves the next day. After a very pointed clearing of the throat from Fred, not to mention a _significant look_, John and Rodney both promise to keep in touch. John watches Rodney ride off in a government issue sedan and decides that, while he might not feel good to be stuck on Earth instead of free on Atlantis, he feels less bad.

Fred huffs at John like he's a troublesome toddler she's just taught to tie his own shoelaces. "I don't know why you idiots thought breaking all contact was a good idea."

Given the similar paths they seem to have traveled, John figures that Fred has to know that from personal experience. He tilts his head--_meaningfully_\--and Fred squirms.

"Oh, shut up," she mutters. John smirks.

*

The night before Fred leaves they drink an entire case of beer and get drunk as hell.

"Isotropy," Fred slurs. John struggles to focus his gaze, doesn't manage it, and instead claps a clumsy hand over one of his eyes so that Fred will just stop existing in double- and triple-vision. "Direction doesn't matter. Property's still the same."

John isn't sure if she's referring to her and him, to John and his new situation, or to Fred and whatever it is that goes on with her odd life. After careful consideration he decides that it doesn't matter; it's true in any case.

*

Fred leaves behind a case of beer, a fridge full of Southern food, and small satchels of...something...that she hangs at each window and from the handle of John's front door.

"Just trust me and keep them there, okay?" she says when John stares at one with a furrowed, skeptical brow.

John's run a city with his mind, fought alien vampire-things, and walked through Wormholes in another galaxy. He might not know what all Fred is into but he knows that there are more things out there than he can comprehend. He leaves them all where they are.

*

Before John rides off to another galaxy in a stolen Jumper, he thinks of Fred, of isotropy, and realizes that he is who he is, no matter the situation, even when he maybe shouldn't be. He isn't all that bothered by that fact.

*

.End


End file.
